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Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Nick Biddle is a retired professor of Latin American history who lives in Brattleboro and works with nonprofits in Vermont and Ecuador. He and Tim Kipp, a retired Brattleboro Union High School social studies teacher, will present a discussion, “How Did We Get Here? Democracy in Peril,” on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 6 p.m. at 118 Elliot Gallery.
Nick Biddle is a retired professor of Latin American history who lives in Brattleboro and works with nonprofits in Vermont and Ecuador. BRATTLEBORO-For the health of Vermont and the Democratic Party, Treasurer Mike Pieciak needs to declare his intentions. While I am not thrilled with the Democratic Party and...
BRATTLEBORO-The upcoming Democratic primary between Emilie Kornheiser and Amanda Ellis-Thurber is a political travesty. Praised by her colleagues in the House and Senate as "a tremendous leader" (Rep. Tristan Toleno) who "looks at tax policy in a different way that has eyes strictly on Vermonters and Vermonters' needs" (Rep.
Please bear with me as I do my historian thing and take us quickly through the origins of the United States of America's so-called democracy. Thomas Jefferson's famous words in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, were at the time common jargon. These fine words passed like wildfire, from Parisian salons to Scottish Rite Masonic Temples to Boston's Faneuil Hall. They were code words...
David Zuckerman is the better candidate for governor. He is the leading voice in the state for a living wage, green jobs, and racial and environmental justice. His opponent, Gov. Phil Scott, is a governor of vetoes. He has vetoed bills to raise the minimum wage, to provide paid family leave, and to lower carbon emissions. Gov. Scott is holding Vermont back. David Zuckerman is working for a better future. When on Sept. 15 Gov. Scott vetoed the Global Warming...
Scholars have debated fascism's definition and contours since its inception in 1919. All agree that it is a form of radical nationalist authoritarianism. As I peruse various interpretations, accounts, and analyses of fascism, the view that speaks most persuasively is that of Robert Paxton. In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton offers a definition: Fascism, he writes, is “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of...
The United States of America began in the Enlightenment-driven hope of human equality and the rights of self-determination most memorably articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Conflicts between creditors, debtors, and democracy arose immediately after the Revolution in 1781. By 1786, these conflicts turned into explosions of rebellion and repression, which pushed the leaders of the Revolution, the wealthy men who signed the Declaration of Independence, to convene what became the Constitutional Convention in 1787. There, the Founders contended with...
At the People's Summit recently held in Chicago, I saw several thousand people come together to celebrate the “political revolution” launched by Bernie Sanders and to confront the question of what next in the face of Hillary Clinton's presumptive nomination. Many came hoping Bernie will join with Jill Stein and the Green Party to continue his campaign. Most organizers understood that proposition unlikely. Bernie has made his bed in the Democratic Party, and that is where he is going to...
